


Oh, here I am.

by crucialandinert (orphan_account)



Category: Arsenic and Old Lace (1944)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Anxiety, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-09
Updated: 2020-08-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:01:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25811005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crucialandinert
Summary: I tell you later about that!
Relationships: Jonathan Brewster/Herman Einstein
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Oh, here I am.

**Author's Note:**

> Among the small group of people who would possibly be interested in this, the majority still won't be cuz it's nothing to do with a ship. Perhaps if you have past history (or, hopefully not, present) with alcohol misuse and abusive relationships, and want some weird art therapy, give it a try.
> 
> Glossary:
> 
>  _von Angst geplagt_ : plagued with fear.  
>  _mein Schnaps_ : my booze.  
>  _um Gottes willen_ : God willing.  
> "flop _haus_ ": Germanlish for "flophouse."  
>  _Ja_ : Yes.  
>  _Sehr lustig_ : Very funny.  
>  _Bier_ : Beer.  
>  _Gymnasium_ : High school.  
>  _Kleiner_ : Little.  
>  _aber_ : But.  
>  _Schmitten_ : pl. of _Schmitte_ ; a dueling scar traditional to German student culture. This might be what is referred to when Einstein says he will "make a [what sounds like] _Schmitte_ , that's my specialty" when discussing his plans for Jonathan's next face.  
>  _madmoiselle_ : French for "miss," used by courtly Continental gents.  
>  _Mitzi-leh_ : Yiddish diminutive of "Mitzi."  
>  _ein plastischer Chirurg_ : A plastic surgeon.  
>  _Dreck_ : Dirt. Used a lot in Yiddish.  
>  _du Genie_ : You genius.  
>  _die Unterwelt_ : The underworld.  
>  _Krrct_ : The sound of twisting a neck.  
>  _Kopf_ : Head.  
>  _lecteur_ : French for "reader," used if you happen to be thinking of Baudelaire's _[Fleurs du Mal](https://fleursdumal.org/poem/099)_.  
>  _der Kindergarten_ : Kkindergarten.  
>  _Ach du liebe Gott_ : Oh dear God.  
> 

_Where am I?  
Oh, here I am._

I think those questions every morning. While I sleep, I forget. I can dream I am not anywhere, and that is where I like to stay. Waking up is not a very pleasing thing for me to do. Of course, no one would consider it pleasant to wake up with the body needing alcohol. Pounding head, tremens, aching for fluids, nausea, all the nerves inflamed, the heart racing, _von Angst geplagt_. Eternal torture but with one cure: a drink. A doctor knows how to be sick.

So, the first place I am, is next to my _Schnaps, um Gottes willen_. Next, as my heart calms down, I look around and I see—some kind of a flop _haus_ or cheap hotel... and that I am still with Johnny. This is when comes the second drink. That one spreads warmth in my belly and floats my head away, and I can breathe... maybe just one more. Quick.

Maybe he notices me, I am awake. I don't want to look at him, but I look. All the time, I watch his face. Is he still? Or are the clouds coming. How can I catch it, make it calm down, before it's really time to be frightened. He is all I can look. He is all the fear in the world. There is a little funny satisfaction too. If I look at Johnny, I do not have to look at what is behind me. If I am near Johnny, nothing else can get close. I am a small man, in a big world, and I must have something to hide behind. Why not him? My fears would be a million if it wasn't for Johnny... instead of only one.

Perhaps it's time to hit the road. Johnny never eats in the morning. Sleeping, eating—he doesn't need, only I hope for that. His body only needs hate. Truly it's amazing. A medical miracle, _Ja_? I giggle. _Sehr lustig_ , isn’t it?

Johnny drives the car. He looks straight ahead, not left not right. He looks once at the map and never again til we get there. The only thing for me to do is: carefully measure the _Schnaps_ so that I am not overly intoxicated when we stop for the night. Try to keep around 0.12 g per ml. That way he is not too much angry.

We go in silence. We are lucky that we like the same programs on the radio: the war news and Hitler's speeches. Not for the same reason.

So, drink, radio, silence, for hours and hours. Looking at these American landscapes you might as well be in Hell already. Nothing, and so much of it. Even the cows look morose. I cannot keep out from my mind the question, the other question, that comes after _Where am I?_  


_How did I get here?_

Perhaps I suffered some great disgrace, no? That's what people always think. He shamed himself and drank away his shame. Maybe so, for some. Not so, me. The drink came first, and of course then came disgrace. Then came—I disappear. Do I think of my family, back at home, that I left behind in what Germany has become? Of course I do. I think: I hope they think "poor Laszy" is dead. I think: I do not know if they might be.

No, drink came to me the same way as to anyone. Sipping papa's _Bier_ , everyone remembers doing that. Soon enough, we are at _Gymnasium_ and make merry with the rest of the boys. There is always one who can't hold his drink. We laugh and carry him home. _Kleiner_ Laszy, he tries to keep up with us. _Sehr lustig._

 _Kleiner_ Laszy, such a clever little Jew, now a big man, 17, already at university in Heidelberg, to be a doctor. Why did papa slave as a merchant, if not for that? Yes, _aber_ also—Laszy loves it. What could be more fascinating, than the world, the universe, in the body. To see pain, is difficult—not the bloody inside, not the dead body, but the pain of the ones who are living. Maybe some of the other students, with their _Schmitten_ from dueling, laugh at him for this, for being soft. But to ease pain... to see in someone's eyes, you eased pain.... It's a calm to the heart, like no other. To learn this, to do it—it fills up the life. And there is one fellow student who doesn't laugh: Mitzi, the little Jewess, much more cleverer than Laszlo, with sparkling eyes. By the time he is a doctor, she goes from “Madmoiselle” to “Mitzi-leh.” Drink? Champagne, to celebrate.

But the engagement is growing long. Poor Laszy, he cannot get together the money to be married. His own fault. He wants to be a surgeon, _ein plastischer Chirurg_ , to save faces and limbs, and Jews are supposed to keep to the lesser specialties: general medicine, or stupid dermatology. So he works at the hospitals for the poor, that will take him, and he lives on nothing, like a mouse, and he saves. Years he saves without getting any closer. Well, perhaps in Berlin there will be more chances. And there are, but there is still little money, and the life is more expensive... and there is no Mitzi-leh in the evening anymore, to laugh with and to care for, and to kiss her little hands, and hold her close.

Also—simply it's cold, in the boarding house. He comes home late, he sees no one, he lies in bed, shivering, how cold it is. Surely it's more important he gets some sleep. Surely it's more and more important. And more, and more, and more.

It goes so fast. If his hands are shaking, just a little bit, surely he needs to take care of it before he can operate, just a little bit. Just a little bit more, the day is so long. Just a little bit more, it's impossible to work around such stupid people. Just a little bit more, I am afraid of being caught. I need to slow my beating heart, before they all will see me.

How long was it like that, before a little girl will never see again? I don't know. It was like a dream.  


_Where am I?  
Oh, here I am._  
  


There was no way to say goodbye. A coward, I left them. Papa, brother, sister, Mitzi. Step-mama. If I believed I knew then that I was leaving them in danger—I cannot finish that sentence, even to myself. Maybe I could have got them out, got them to London? I would have had to look them in the eye.

I had no license there, and I wouldn't try to get one. I had no wishes anymore. To ease my own pain, was all I cared. I took the patients that look for a doctor like that. At first, I thought I can help the girls who are in trouble. Perhaps my disgrace can cure theirs. But I couldn't see it. The tears on their cheeks. Their cruel fathers, desperate mothers, the absolute desertion by the men they loved, or the discovery that to the men they loved so much, they were only _Dreck_ all along, worse than nothing. And of course... to see a little baby in your hands. Who could have had a life, in a different world, where people was not like how they are, where there was different rules. To be intoxicated enough to see that... I would be blind, I couldn't move, let alone operate safely on those poor girls. Try to kill only one at a time, "Dr. Einstein," _du Genie_ —you genius.

So instead of a criminal doctor, I became a doctor for criminals. It was a good trade. Plenty of work, and few complaints. They weren't trying to look beautiful, no one cared about a few mistakes. I began to make a name for myself in _die Unterwelt_. Beyond London, even, they came from the Continent too.

The first face I gave Johnny, it was very nice. He was very pleased. You can do good work when you are your own man. But he killed again, too quick. _Krrct_. He wasn't healed, I couldn't help him, he had to leave. "You're coming with me, Doctor," he said. "Okay, Johnny." Was it really as easy as that? Maybe so. When those eyes look right through you... when you know what he's done... when you know what you've done, too.

I am not a dummy. I even attended a lecture of Freud once. Believe me, I know, my imaginary _lecteur_ , to who I am talking inside my silly _Kopf_ while I look at this big American nothing out the window, a man's life does not become to ruination by drink because he is cold. No... I think it is like an anatomy, the psyche. Like when a man loses a leg, and the ghost of the leg, itches. Something is missing from my psyche, just like that. When it itches, I drink. Today, it itches like the Devil.

If I am enough intoxicated now to think behind me at the little boy I was, not even out of _der Kindergarten_ ; and how the world changed without my Mama in it; and how my real shame is that I was [broken, so](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef2OArY8Vb0); and that I was so weak that I stayed that way; and that it was only a matter of time before everybody was going to see it—then I must be enough intoxicated that it will be trouble with Johnny when we get there. Oh no, we have almost got there. _Ach du liebe Gott._  
__  
[_Where am I?  
Oh, here I am._](http://www.ealasaid.com/fan/lorrelibrary/lorre/aaol/darkhere.wav)

**Author's Note:**

> Some things relate to reality a little bit.
> 
> -It's been wondered by the very small population of pedantic Arsenic and Old Lace fans why Dr. Einstein says "Heidelberg, 1919" when questioned about his medical bona fides as it seems like it would make him quite a bit older than the “40″ given in his description in the circular. Well, if you use the filming date (1941) instead of the release date (1944), and take into account that in 1919 in Germany, you did 4 years of med school and were then considered a full doctor ("residency" wasn't a thing), and if you assume he's 18 in 1915 when he starts med school, that makes him born in 1898 and 44 at the time of the story. James Gleeson as Lt. Rooney says Einstein is "about 40"; however, in the script the line is "about 44." The exchange "Are you really a doctor?" "Yes, Heidelberg, 1919!" doesn't appear in the script (at least not in the 12-3-1941 draft, although it isn’t labeled as a shooting script) so quite likely it's an improv as are many lines in this scene. Meaning, Lorre had done the math, as he himself was 37 at the time. Just one among many little moments that shows off his very detailed creation of this role. 
> 
> -Giving him the real name "Laszlo" (nicknamed "Laszy"), his Jewish ethnicity, and the death of his mother when he was 4 are all biographical details from Lorre's life. Having attended a lecture by Freud is probably a tall tale made up later, but not impossible given that Lorre got his start in Jacob Moreno's "Theatre of Spontaneity" which combined psychotherapeutic treatment with drama.
> 
> -While Weimar Berlin was a comparatively great environment for German Jews in medicine, there were still prejudices about what specialties they should do.
> 
> -the part about "the psyche is like anatomy" is from another very good movie where Lorre plays an alcoholic, _Three Strangers_. Also featuring Sidney Greenstreet for those who like that pairing, and the closest Lorre came to playing a romantic lead.


End file.
